Award-Winning Novelist Chang-Rae Lee
DATE: Thursday, November 13, 2003
TIME: 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
LOCATION: : International House, Assembly Hall, 1414 East 59th Street, Chicago.
The event is free and open to the public.
The New Yorker recently named Chang-rae Lee one of the "Twenty Best Fiction Writers Under Forty." His first two novels, Native Speaker and A Gesture Life, won a host of literary honors, including the Hemingway/PEN Award for Best First Novel, the American Book Award, QPB's New Voices Award, the Asian-American Literary Award, the Annisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.
Lee takes up the themes of cultural alienation, fragmented identity, and assimilation in much of his work. A Gesture Life is a story about an elderly immigrant born in Korea but raised in Japan who served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II treating Korean "comfort women." The main character of Native Speaker, a Korean immigrant, struggles to become a "true American," a "native speaker." Chang-rae Lee's new novel, Aloft, will be released by Riverhead Books in March 2004.
This event is co-sponsored by the International House Global Voices Program. The other University of Chicago event co-sponsors are the Asian/Asian American Mentorship Program, the Asian Pacific American Graduate Student Collective, the Korean Student Organization, Minorities in Public Policy Student Association, MOIM @ the KILMOK, and the PanAsian Solidarity Coalition. Asian American Students United at Northwestern University and Asian Social Network are off-campus co-sponsors. For additional information contact the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at (773) 702-8063 or csrpc@uchicago.edu.
Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact the International House Office of Programs and Special Events in advance at (773) 753-2274..
